If I spend enough time in Costco, it’s almost inevitable that one of the blue-hatted sample pushers will hand me a little white Dixie cup of snack food.

They smile and tell me the snack’s a sure hit at parties. They point to the correct aisle and tell me what a good deal it is. More often than not, they end their sales pitch with a tagline like “and it’s all-natural, certified organic and GMO-free!”

Ten years ago, most South Dakotans probably didn’t know what “GMO free” meant. Now it’s a sales factor on par with “new and improved.”

The cultural shift in consumer attitudes about food that put that tagline on the lips of the Costco employees has happened rapidly and gains steam every year. More people want to avoid genetically-modified organisms, hormone-treated meat and dairy and are buying more cage-free eggs and organic produce.

Advocates for change in the agriculture industry, like Professor John Ikerd of Iowa, say this is because the public is waking up to the social and environmental cost of monoculture, concentrated animal feeding operations and industrial food systems.

Farmers, ranchers, ag boosters and food scientists, like David Wright of South Dakota State University, say it’s because the Internet has helped push half-informed, unscientific fears about food safety into the public eye.

It’s a philosophical war for the public’s stomach, and it’s one the conventional ag industry is losing.

The industry is fighting back, through public relations campaigns, websites, social media and farm tours. There’s even an interactive touch-screen coming to The Empire Mall.

The other side moves though the same worlds with an opposing message.

If the war of words has an economic ground zero, it’s the Midwest. Agriculture is South Dakota’s top industry, an economic anchor for the state’s rural areas that contributes a healthy share of dollars to its urban areas, as well.

Two events by opposing sides this week

Both sides of the debate brought their message directly to the people in southeastern South Dakota this week, in surprisingly close proximity.

On Thursday, Ag United’s “Farms After Five” took a group of more than 50 people – mostly Sioux Falls residents – to tour a modern family farm near Garretson and a large dairy six miles to the north.

On Saturday, Dakota Rural Action is sponsoring a talk near Brookings about the ills of large-scale feedlots by Ikerd and a rundown of how to battle them in zoning boards and in court by Sioux Falls lawyer Mitch Peterson.

Wright was the keynote speaker during dinner on Thursday. As the assembled city-dwellers ate beef from Nathan Braun’s cattle, Wright ran through a power point presentation on GMOs in the modern food system.

About 94 percent of soybeans and 93 percent of corn in the U.S. have been genetically-modified for higher yields or herbicide-resistance.

The lion’s share of scientists concur with the Food and Drug Administration: GMOs are safe. A Pew Research poll this spring showed that 88 percent of scientists agree that GMOs are safe, but only 37 percent of the general public does.

“That’s a pretty significant disconnect,” Wright said.

The Internet has been part of the problem, Wright said, as a plethora of websites move stories about “toxins” or dangers that have be debunked or never were proven. The term “toxin” is especially vexing for Wright, he said, especially when applied to glyphosate herbicide, the chemical behind Roundup.

The notion of toxicity ought to be taken in context, he said: The lethal dose of glyphosate is higher than a lethal dose of sugar, salt, caffeine or vitamin A.

“Aspirin has a greater chance of killing you than Roundup,” Wright said.

Trend against GMOs is picking up steam

That message hasn’t resonated with the public in the way the worries about GMOs have. Every month, it seems, more restaurants and food companies pledge to avoid genetically-modified organisms. Chipotle Restaurants pledged to scrub GMOs from its menu this year. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is GMO-free. McDonald’s opted to reject a genetically-modified potato variety last year.

This is all troubling for people like Peter Bakken, a producer on the Minnesota-South Dakota border who was on hand for the farm tour Thursday.

“Where’s the box of cereal that says GMO on it? Give me that one,” Bakken said.

The message behind the marketing is transparency, Bakken said. The vast majority of South Dakota farmers are family farms. Most corporations are family corporations. The more people visit farms to see how farmers feed their own corn to cattle or test their soils and work to reduce herbicide and pesticide use, the better people will feel about where their food comes from.

“Transparency is a big deal,” Bakken said. “We’re all trying to do the best with what we’ve got.”

Ikerd knows producers are doing their best to survive. As revolution-minded academics go, Ikerd is remarkably well-mannered.

“The farmers out there are good people and they want to do the right thing,” Ikerd said.

When the professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia talks about the dangers of industrial agriculture, he does it in a slow, polite southern drawl.

Professor shares ‘my truth, not the truth’

At the start of our phone conversation this week, he cautioned me that his feelings are based on research and study, but that his conclusions represent “my truth, not the truth.” His 2007 paper on the shortfalls of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) has a similar opening salvo.

“My truth is based on everything I have learned from this decade of experience,” he wrote in the second paragraph. “If your truth is different from mine, that’s okay with me.”

Even so, the message he offers on CAFOs — his area of interest — is stark and clear. Unlike some proponents of organic and small-scale agriculture, Ikerd does not see large feedlots as an option that can fit alongside family farms. There’s too much manure in one place, he said: The waste from a 1,000-head dairy creates as large an environmental impact as a city of 20,000.

“What you’re looking at is a biological risk,” he said.

Manure in a controlled system will leech into groundwater and aquifers, he said, and manure spread on fields or pumped into the soil will run off or drain through into rivers and streams.

So are producers to avoid spreading manure, I asked? What should be happening? Chemical fertilizer is one option, he said, but the real answer is less, he says. Smaller farms and smaller-scale operations make more environmental sense, he said.

“What we’re doing right now is we’re mismanaging by over-applying for maximum yields and maximum profitability instead of protecting public health and protecting the environment,” Ikerd said.

CAFOs don’t bring the kind of economic development a community wants, he argues. It brings wealth to a small group of owners and low-wage jobs for the rest of a community. Roads could be damaged by increased traffic, canceling out the tax benefits of a CAFO.